The Suffering of Man

Word count: 300



         Jerry stared up at the crack in the ceiling that had showed up last winter.  The city was on a decline, the house was crumbling around them and their marriage was falling apart.  He needed to just face it—his life was going down the toilet.

         Meg coughed hard and rolled away from him, taking the covers with her.  She had brought this damned flu home from one of those miserable little ‘petri dishes’ she taught.  They had been sick for weeks now. She didn’t seem too bad, but Jerry was pretty sure he was dying. 

         Meg had taken his temperature with one of those stupid strips and announced his temperature was normal.  He didn’t trust those strips and searched through cluttered drawers.  He’d found a flashlight, and that Philips-head screwdriver missing from the wall of the garage, before he had found a ‘real’ thermometer.  The old-fashion kind made of glass and mercury.

         He stuck it under his tongue and waited. After a minute he removed and read it. But it had taken a few minutes to find the right spot.  And of course by that time, it read normal. 

         Meg snatched it, shook it down and jammed it back under his tongue.  She waited two minutes, and checked it.  Then announcing it was still normal, went to bed.

         She then had the gall to fall asleep.  Meanwhile his head pounded and his muscles ached.  He toddled out to the bathroom and rooted through the medicine cabinet.  He didn’t care what Meg and the doctor said, Tylenol just wasn’t making a dent in his suffering.  He took two each of Contacts and Coricidan, a dose of Triametic and topped it off with a generous shot of Nyquil.  At least if he woke up, he was pretty sure he’d feel better.